Friday, August 21, 2015

F**ck Winning

I stumbled across this piece, "Fuck Winning," by
Albert Burneko while skipping about the Internet (as you do) and read it, just read
it.

Because yes, fuck winning, fuck the tournament system, fuck the
ruthless competition/winner-takes-all/Hunger Games that is coming for us all.
We don't need to beat down our kids; the world is going to do that soon enough.
We don't need to teach them that only "winners" are worthwhile; that
life is to be measured in trophies and salaries and prestigious job titles and tangibly
shiny medals; isn't the world going to teach them all that without our help?

Here is the passage in Burneko's piece that closed my throat:

As I write
this, my two young sons are running around a grassy field where I can watch
them. They have balloons stuffed under their shirts; they are crashing into
each other with their big balloon-bellies and making weird monster noises and
giggling so hard they can’t speak; the sun is in their hair and their eyes are
bright with some anarchicLooney Tunesglee at a game that has no rules and cannot be won or lost. I
want them to feel good about everything. I want to celebrate them for existing,
to celebrate them for every day some absurd electrochemical miracle keeps their
brave hearts beating and wards off entropy for a bit longer so they can wake up
and wonder about things, to celebrate them for lighting up the world and for
not having accepted its terms just yet.